beeeks

Hi guys, first post here. I checked around on the forum and couldn't find anything, so wanted to ask.

About a year ago, all of my warning chimes, low fuel alert sound, turn signal noises, and other sounds you get from the instrument cluster stopped. They have pretty much been off since then.

However, I've noticed that if the car sits in the sun and gets really hot inside, the sounds work. It feels to me like something is loose, and when it gets hot it expands and the chimes start working again.

There are no other problems with the car.

I just took apart the instrument cluster, reconnected the wiring harness, and looked for issues. No luck. I took the actual instrument cluster apart as much as I could and saw what looked like a small, single pizeo buzzer on the back, but it looked intact. (I'm not sure if that's the only speaker). I did not remove the needles and look under the faceplate, didn't want to go there.

I also just checked out the fuses and the wiring around the smart junction box, where the wiring for the instrument cluster goes, and nothing appears to be out of the ordinary.

The Ford service manual says that there's either a circuit issue with the power going to the board, or that there's a problem and the entire instrument cluster needs to be replaced. I just think that's a shame because it works every now and then, and only when the car gets hot. Seems to strange to me.

Anyone have any ideas what may be wrong? Thanks in advance for your comments!

Nuke

Move south. It'll work about 10-11 months out of the year.

JimC

The description seems to match what you have found - something making intermittent connection cutting power to the board, or the cluster itself going bad and a bad connection in the cluster that may be too small for you to see looking at the connections when you pull the cluster out.